Happy Birthday to Tim Armstrong, 47.
Plenty of good stuff for a holiday week:
1. Four pieces -- Greg Koger, Barbara Sinclair, Aaron Belkin, and Richard Arenberg -- on the post-nuclear Senate.
2. Another one, from David Mayhew.
3. And another from Sarah Binder. I suppose she's right that the Senate will never quite "become the House" -- something I'm guilty of saying. However, I do think the risk (or, if you like it, the promise) of it coming close enough is sufficient that it's only a misdemeanor, not a felony, to use it as a shorthand.
4. Mark Goldberg on the Iran deal.
5. Fred Kaplan on the Iran deal.
6. Why is JFK so popular? I don't disagree with the three numbered reasons Matthew Dickinson gives us, but as I've said before I suspect the unnumbered one following those -- the active efforts by the Kennedy family and allies to produce that popularity -- is really the key (as it is with Reagan).
7. Kevin Drum makes the key point that the entire health care industry, basically, is already committed to ACA (because they had to be), which means that it ain't gonna disappear. Which matches the point that I've been making: repeal of ACA is long dead because the status quo ante no longer exists; whatever happens will be building on ACA, not starting over.
Drum has also been having an interesting discussion with Dean Baker about social security policy and what progressive goals and priorities should be:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2013/11/retiree-income-workers
On the ACA--the rollout may have been rough but the preparation appears to have been good. Now maybe the people who wondered why it took so long to get it started will begin to realize why: it changes a huge industry and a fundamental part of the economy.
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